Happy Friday! Blue Jays fan Liz McGuire was minding her own business, watching a game in Toronto on Friday when she was hit in the face by a 110-mile-per-hour foul ball, getting a doozy of a goose egg for her trouble. Like a true fan, she gutted it out and stayed until the last pitch, and she didn’t even get the ball that hit her.
But the shortstop who hit the offending foul sent her a signed ball—and to top it off, she now has her own trading card. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The Senate on Thursday failed to pass the bipartisan immigration compromise first put forward in February by a vote of 43-50. Two of the three original negotiators of the legislation, GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, joined nearly every Republican—with the exception of Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—and a handful of Democrats in voting down the legislation.
- In a 6-3 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling that held a South Carolina congressional district was a racial gerrymander. In the majority opinion—joined by the other conservative justices—Justice Samuel Alito held that the district was drawn primarily to give a political advantage to Republicans, not to disenfranchise black voters, as the NAACP argued.
- The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Power Five athletic conferences reached a $2.8 billion agreement on Thursday to settle three federal antitrust lawsuits, paving the way for the NCAA to pay athletes directly for the first time. As part of the deal, the NCAA will pay out the almost $3 billion settlement over a decade to players who were denied the ability to earn endorsements and sponsorship deals and schools would be allowed, but not required, to directly compensate athletes as part of a revenue-sharing system. A judge must approve the deal.
- The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Thursday that railroad operator Norfolk Southern agreed to a more than $500 million settlement to address the environmental harm caused when its train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year. Some $300 million will go toward environmental cleanup in the town while another $200 million will pay for railway safety upgrades.
- Louisiana state lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation on Thursday to reclassify two abortion-inducing drugs—mifepristone and misoprostol—as controlled substances. The bill—which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign into law—would require doctors prescribing the drugs to get a special license to do so, as well as institute criminal penalties for those in possession of them without a prescription. It is already illegal to use the pills to induce an abortion in the state, except to save the life of the mother or in the case of a fatal fetal abnormality.
Who’s Afraid of a Space Nuke?
One of your Morning Dispatchers would like to take this opportunity to apologize to her office-mates at Dispatch HQ for talking incessantly about Apple TV+’s series, For All Mankind. But her hours spent watching the fantastic alternate history, Cold-War-Space-Race-inspired TV show this spring have paid off, functioning as a strange sort of primer for today’s TMD.
Though it may seem more like the stuff of excellent prestige dramas than reality, Russia launched a satellite last week of … ambiguous purpose, highlighting just how present a concern space capabilities and the development of counter-space weapons are in real life. Russia, once a space power but now in decline, is developing new ways to degrade U.S. assets in space, including with technology that could blur the line between weapon and more benign space tech as fears of a latent nuclear satellite capability loom.
“What I’m tracking here is on May 16 … Russia launched a satellite into low-Earth orbit that we assess is likely a counter-space weapon, presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low-Earth orbit,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday. That Russian satellite, U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM) said, now occupies the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite.
What does that mean in plain English? “A whole range of mechanisms can be ...
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Worth Your Time
- The past 40 years have seen a significant decline in drunk driving and drunk driving-related fatalities. In an essay for Works in Progress, Nick Cowen argued that such progress provides a lesson in the power of stigma. “Viewed from the 1960s it might have seemed like ending drunk driving would be impossible,” he wrote. “Yet things did change: in 1980, 1,450 fatalities were attributed to drunk driving accidents in the UK. In 2020, there were 220. … Many things have happened in the last 40 years that contributed to this reduction. Vehicles are better designed to prioritize life preservation in the event of a collision. Emergency hospital care has improved so that people are more likely to survive serious injuries from car accidents. But, above all, driving while drunk has become stigmatized. … Two underappreciated ideas stick out from this experience. First, deterrence works: incentives matter to offenders much more than many scholars found initially plausible. Second, the long-run impact that successful criminal justice interventions have is not primarily in rehabilitation, incapacitation, or even deterrence, but in altering the social norms around acceptable behavior.”
- Writing for UnHerd, David Bell explored the nascent return of scientific history—a concept central to Isaac Asimov’s science fiction series Foundation. “Could history ever become a truly scientific discipline?” Bell wrote. “In the past few years, a number of thinkers have found new ways to say yes. … New attempts at a scientific history have begun to appear. A field calling itself ‘cliodynamics’, spearheaded by the polymath biologist Peter Turchin, has attracted considerable attention, in part because in 2010 Turchin predicted that the United States was heading for massive instability exactly 10 years later. Turchin argues that history can become a ‘mathematised science’ and explicitly compares himself to Asimov’s ‘psycho-historians’. Meanwhile, an increasing number of historians have been using data compiled by actual scientists about past physical changes in the world (especially climate change) to offer new explanations for political and social events such as the fall of the Roman Empire. For the moment, most historians remain either ignorant or skeptical of these new approaches. But should they once again embrace the banner of science?”
Presented Without Comment
New York Times: Political Consultant Who Orchestrated Fake Biden Robocalls Is Indicted
Also Presented Without Comment
The Hill: [Sen. Ted] Cruz on [Amb. Nikki] Haley Backing Trump: ‘I Understand That Journey’
Also Also Presented Without Comment
Wall Street Journal: Detective in Scottie Scheffler Arrest Violated Police Department Policy
In the Zeitgeist
It’s almost beach read time, friends. The New York Times Book Review created a handy compilation of the best books of the last twenty years that you can toggle through by year and genre to find the perfect read for Memorial Day Weekend relaxation.
Toeing the Company Line
- Alex debunked the narrative that the FBI was intent on using “deadly force” in its August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago.
- In the newsletters: Nick wondered (🔒) what’s in it for Nikki Haley to announce she’s voting for Trump, and Will revisited the Cambridge Analytica scandal six years later.
- On the podcasts: Sarah and David discussed Sarah’s interview with Justice Stephen Breyer and SCOTUS’ racial gerrymandering ruling on Advisory Opinions, and Jonah is joined by Steve and Mike to unpack the “deadly force” lie and Haley’s endorsement of Trump on The Dispatch Podcast.
- On the site: Kevin laments the demise of humor in our political era, and Drucker reports from Las Vegas on Biden’s prospects in Nevada.
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